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Cipher Core — an invented writing system your players actually learn (RPG Maker MZ)

A topic by CSAF — Core Systems Asset Factory created 32 days ago Views: 69

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CSAF — Core Systems Asset Factory32 days ago (1 edit)

I kept running into the same wall building mystery games in MZ: if you want the player to decipher something, the engine really only gives you a switch. Before the switch the text is gibberish, after it the text is English. The player didn't learn anything — they walked into the right room.

So I built the other version of it. Cipher Core renders an invented script wherever the language appears, and nothing is pre-translated. Each glyph resolves permanently, everywhere in the game, the moment the player works out what it means — so a word you earn from a bilingual inscription early on makes every sign you already walked past partly readable. The knowledge lives in the player rather than in a switch.

Cipher Core glyphs resolving as the player deduces them

It ships a glyph renderer driven by your own data, a per-glyph knowledge model that persists across saves, a deduction screen where the player commits a guess and is right or wrong, and authoring tools so the language is yours rather than a preset I picked. If you've played Heaven's Vault or Chants of Sennaar, that's the loop.

Page (RPG Maker MZ, $11.99): https://csaf.itch.io/cipher-core

Fair warning so nobody's surprised: this is AI-built, and it's disclosed on the listing. The source ships raw and unminified specifically so you can judge the code yourself instead of taking my word for it. Happy to answer anything about how the deduction model works.